Thor Equities CEO Joseph Sitt and 446 West 14th Street (credit: PropertyShark)
Joseph Sitt’s Thor Equities is seeking $45 million for a Meatpacking District property it bought five years ago for about half that amount, Crain’s reported. Thor commissioned Jones Lang LaSalle to find a buyer for the three-story, 15,525-square-foot building, at 446 West 14th Street, between Washington Street and 10th Avenue, it bought for $23.4 million in 2007. [more]
From left: Joseph Moinian, Joseph Sitt and 245 Fifth Avenue
A $140 million loan on developers Joseph Sitt and Joseph Moinian’s 245 Fifth Avenue has been transferred into special servicing because of default concerns, according to data provided to The Real Deal by analytics firm Trepp.
While the developers are still current on their loan, a default may be imminent, the data indicates. The transfer happened March 5, according to Trepp’s records. [more]
Joseph Sitt’s Thor Equities has agreed to acquire three connected buildings at 516-520 Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street from developer RFR Holding, the Wall Street Journal reported, and is planning to demolish the existing properties and build a new $250 million, 350,000-square-foot mixed-use complex at the site.
The acquisition isn’t Sitt’s sole investment on Fifth Avenue of late. The Thor CEO has also agreed to purchase a building at 445 Fifth Avenue near 39th Street, the Journal said, bringing his holdings on the avenue to eight buildings, all but one of which are south of 49th Street. The exception is the trophy Takashimaya building between 54th and 55th streets, which Sitt acquired last year for $142 million. [more]
Although just a fraction of the size of the largest global retail convention held each year in Las Vegas by the International Council of Shopping Centers, the trade group’s conference taking place in New York City next week is considered the second most important in the country.
One advantage of its smaller size, insiders said, is that the New York show provides for greater concentration on closing deals.
“In Las Vegas, the annual convention has more pageantry,” Mike Pappagallo, COO for the New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based real estate investment trust, Kimco Realty, said. “At New York there is more good old-fashioned blocking and tackling and deal making.” [more]
Come to The Real Deal’s seventh annual forum Nov. 16 at Lincoln Center. This year, some of the biggest names in real estate will discuss the industry’s most pressing issues — debate style. Billy Macklowe will go toe-to-toe with Thor Equities CEO Joseph Sitt and one big-time real estate attorney will touch gloves with another when Adam Bailey and Stuart Saft face-off to discuss topics selected by moderator Bill Griffith, a CNBC anchor. Click here to reserve your tickets today and get the special early-bird rate. TRD
Developer Donald Trump, who spent weeks courting the fringes of American politics in a possible presidential bid, stuck to real estate last night in brief remarks at the premier of a documentary produced by The Real Deal about the prolific and aging New York architect Costas Kondylis. (See more photos after the jump.)
Trump, who traveled the United States questioning President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, praised Kondylis — born in Africa to Greek parents — as a “great design architect.”
Kondylis was the architect on many of Trump’s buildings such as the Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza and an imposing row of residential towers that were critically panned called Riverside South, which face the Hudson River. [more]
Daan Ismailoff, a former Coney Island real estate broker, filed suit alleging he was “defrauded” out of $1.1 million when he brokered the sale of four acres of beachfront property near Stillwell Avenue from then-owner Hy Singer to Thor Equities’ Joseph Sitt in 2006, the New York Post reported. Both Sitt and Singer are defendants in the lawsuit. Ismailoff alleged that he entered into an open listing agreement with Singer to show the property, set up a meeting with Singer and a Sitt representative and got them to agree that he’d receive a 6 percent commission on the sale regardless of when it was completed. [more]
Joseph Sitt’s Thor Equities and developer Joseph Moinian have completed the long-awaited deal to buy out Goldman Sachs at 245 Fifth Avenue for $162 million.
The property, near 28th Street, had been up for sale since January, when Moinian and his previous venture partner, Goldman Sachs Whitehall Funds, decided to put the building up for sale through Eastdil Secured.
The property was originally purchased for $190 million, or $620 a square foot, at the height of the market in 2007. [more]
Retail tenants looking for new locations ought to snap up space in and around the yet-
to-be-constructed World Trade Center shopping complex, while those trying to avoid
distress should stay away from stretches of the Upper East Side, brokers at a retail panel
said yesterday.
Lower Manhattan will be the next hot area as neighborhoods like the Meatpacking
District mature, panelist Karen Bellantoni, executive vice president at Robert K.
Futterman & Associates, predicted.
“My sense is what is coming next is the retail at the World Trade Center and surrounding
areas,” she said, because the retail complex there below the destroyed Twin Towers was
very strong, and now the area has more residential apartments. [more]
Jones Lang LaSalle’s expanding investment sales team in the firm’s New York City Capital Markets group has picked up four more brokers: Eric Herlands, Jason Gold, Joseph Sitt and Stephen Shapiro. The firm announced today that the new hires will be working for the high-profile team of Richard Baxter, Jon Caplan, Ron Cohen and Scott Latham, who defected from Cushman & Wakefield to JLL last year in a deal sources said was valued at around $1 million per man. As The Real Deal reported last month, though, the pricey new team has yet to hit its stride, having done only around $200 million in property sales for JLL since its arrival. TRD [more]
